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06
Jul 2021
Manchester NHS staff reveal hospital pressures led to ‘major incident’
Staff at Manchester’s Royal Infirmary say they were informed the hospital had declared a major incident earlier this week amid increasing pressures in its emergency department, fears of a shortage of staff and beds, and long waits for patients.
A number of sources from different departments at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust said staff were told the declaration had been made, but then rapidly reduced to an internal incident to “avoid bad press”.
The trust have denied declaring any incident, but has taken what is known as “business continuity measures”, which is part of NHS England’s incident response and is designed to ensure hospitals maintain patient services in the face of increased demand.
In A&E, staff said patients were facing long waits for transfer to wards and that only 65 per cent of patients were being seen within four hours.
One clinician reported that waits were now commonly over eight to ten hours overnight, caused by a combination of more patients attending, including both those with serious and minor complaints, and a lack of doctors.
They added “There is lots of pressure in the system. Staff are tired. There are very high numbers of attendances and enough Covid for us to start going back to the bad old days.”
A spokesperson from the trust said “Whilst our hospital is busy, we have robust processes in place to help us manage increases in demand so that every patient receives the care that they need and the public can access services by calling 111 for non-emergency support.”
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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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